By Jim Barber
When you have a musical enterprise that is comprised of two identical twin sisters and a third woman who has known those twins and been as close as a sister for their entire lives, the output, the melodic conveyances crafted by that collective hive mind of creativity is going to be compelling at transcendent level. The music coming through your speakers, earbuds or coming through your ears themselves at a show demonstrates a depth of intelligence, of observation, of honesty and authenticity that hits every listener, every audience member with forceful, and demonstrably positive impact, right in their heart, mind and spirit.
This is the light and love for people, the passion for real connection, the insistently beautiful harmonies and melodious creations The Pairs radiate to the world, and have done so for more than a decade. The talented trio of Noelle and Renee Coughlin in concord with Hillary Watson recently released their compelling new album, Together on a Rock, a collection of songs that are infused with a potent blend of musical enchantment, lyrical expressiveness and sagacity as well as a haunting immediacy, thanks to each composition being recorded live off the floor.
The album is a construct birthed from a powerful process of self-examination, rumination and boldly raw, unfettered honesty, as individual songwriters but also as the deeply fused artistic triad that they have always been.
There is a practical and logical reason why they decided to record and release this album now, part of it was lucky timing, as well as a desire to see where their personal and group journeys, experiences and explorations have led them two years on from their last album, 2023’s When Will We Find Our Way?
“We’re writing all the time and it just felt like it was time to put something new out. I think there was an extra push for this one because we were trying to get certain bookings, and we were trying to enter a certain live performance space and offer proof of what we do, and how we sound when we play. All of our recordings up until this one have been produced with a much larger band than how we actually present. So we did feel a sense of urgency around creating an album that reflected our live performance. And then there was also some serendipity too,” Renee explained.
“We were on tour in the New England area and we had met Tracy Walton at a Northeast Regional Folk Alliance conference several months before the tour. So we met him and several months later he noticed that we were on tour in the area and that we had a couple of days off. He is a producer and his studio was very close to where we were touring at the time. So he reached out on social media and asked us if we wanted to just come by and do a live off the floor video recording for a series that he puts out on YouTube to help promote the studio. And we did, and it was awesome. The vibe in the studio was beautiful. And he was just asking about what our plans were and at the time we were actually hoping to record something ourselves because we were intending to make a way more minimalist album production wise. Minimal instruments, everything. We thought that we could do it ourselves, but as we started explaining that to Tracy he got really excited about the vibe that we were going for on this new record and he wanted to be part of that. So, yeah, he offered to help us make the record – and now we’re best friends. So he made the offer in May and we were back in there to record in September [of 2024].”
It was always the plan to release Together on a Rock as a full album, with Renee articulating why she and her bandmates not only appreciate full albums as music lovers themselves, but as a way for artists to have that fuller, more dynamic and expansive vehicle to express a broader, deeper and more nuanced array of emotions and ideas.
“I think artistically, it’s a really beautiful thing still. To me, the idea of an album is still to sit down and listen, start to finish and spend time with the music, spend time with a specific artist or band and dig in to what they’re trying to say through their body of work. I mean, passive listening has a purpose and it’s fun to have music on in different spaces and that’s great, but I think all of us are really connected to storytelling and an album gets to tell a slightly longer story,” she said, talking a little more about the thought process behind the timing and tone of what would become the new album.
“Last summer, when we recorded it, there was lots going on. There still is, there always is. But I think the three of us felt pretty overwhelmed by the amount of things that were going on in the news. And also we were really wondering if it’s even something we wanted to put out, to be part of a collection of voices that’s asking for people to listen to them. We didn’t know. Trying to be heard in amongst all of this noise out in the world today, everybody just asking for attention, everybody wanting to have their story heard. So when we talked about the album, we were also really cognizant of the fact that we wanted to do something for people’s hearts. We wanted to put something out that allowed people to connect with themselves and be with themselves in a process of perhaps grief or hope, or trying to harness a sense of light that they could put out into the world in this time that feels just so chaotic. And you hear a lot of stories of pain and sadness, and we want people to be able to process and feel and have this music as a companion to be able to do those things.”
Renee, Noelle and Hillary, through their music, whether it was intentional or not, have been that light in a dark world for the past decade, using not just their art, but their humanity, humility, compassion, deep understanding of the importance of community and connection, and their quiet but unmistakable strength of purpose to at the very least, distract others from their troubles, toils and travails. But often, their labours do much more – their presence, their shows and their music have become a beacon of hope, a breath of authenticity and exceptionally resonant, heartfelt poeticism in an often awful world.
Having seen the effect of their performances and their music on audiences many times, the observation can be made that The Pairs and their music are like that beautiful flower, it’s petals facing up to the sun sitting alone in a parched desert, or a patch of resilient green grass which has pushed through the tarmac, a sharp, contrasting eminence of green and colour, of life and vitality standing up strong in the midst of the grey desolation. Overly dramatic? Perhaps, but accurate.
Music and art created by humans who have the ability to channel feeling and meaningful ideas and concepts, to take their own confusion, consternation and emotional cracks and fault lines and turn it into something that is darkly beautiful, but still very real, very emotive and very relatable, is a remarkable gift, and arguably the purpose of art and the underpinnings of a creative spirit. But it is not easy, life is already hard, and then having what can almost seem like a burden to be the source of inspiration, the source of distraction of elevation of the mind and heart for others – can be depletive and exhausting. But this is why artist, musicians and songwriters like The Pairs are so rare, so valued … and so needed.
“During the pandemic, there were a lot of things that came to light for the three of us around learning about the world and ourselves. I think because of the prominence of different social justice movements in more mainstream media, it was like we were, along with many people, forced into kind of a self-reckoning in a way. I know for me, acknowledging the ways in which I put me first at the expense of others. And also acknowledging that capitalism as a system f***ing sucks and is always exploiting someone. It was this really big chunk of time in my life where I was like relentlessly seeking information to try and understand more about the world that I was part of and contributing to. And I’m so grateful that there were so many people in my life that encouraged me to feel the effects of what that information did to my own sense of self and my sense of security in the world. For me, the songs that I have written that are on this record are a really deep reflection of my own kind of unravelling,” said Renee.
“There’s a lot of anger about the system, but also coming to this other side of where I see that the earth is so beautiful and there are so many little corners and pockets of it that are microscopic, but also massive, that are just teeming with life and resilience. I feel so angry at the fact that so much of our prominent systems tells us about what we lack on this earth and has people fighting over things and being really greedy. These songs, to me, for this record were about saying, can we please come together and realize how much we actually have outside of the system of capitalism. Like, just the fact that we have bodies that breathe involuntarily and bring in life into us and then does something chemically to transfer that oxygen into something else that sustains us. That is a big part of this record, for me.”
Then there’s another metaphor, or description on how the act of creating, the act of digging deep, opening oneself up to the slings and arrows of outrageous emotional fortune by being raw, being red raw, by prying open unwelcome, unbidden, uncovered sources of doubt, anguish and self-abasement from deep, deep inside your soul. While Renee was tussling with larger questions of systemic inequality, unfairness and its horrendous impacts on the world and on how we humans interact, for Hillary, the battles were more inward, more solitary, more deeply existential. In describing the process she went through to create some songs for Together on a Rock, it came across much like how a lobster or crab sloughs off their old skin. It is a long, involved, vulnerable and painful process as they grow, shedding their former exoskeleton, leaving behind a new one that is softer, redder, and much rawer. The solid casing for the new outer skin takes time to harden, meaning for a while, after the shedding, the creature is incredibly vulnerable … but also now at a stage in life where it can grow even more. Again, maybe a trite and unwieldy metaphor from a non-poetic writer, but it seems to suit the narrative Hillary shared.
“I definitely feel and resonate with what Renee said on a band level too. And what we’ve talked a lot about has been a big topic for us. And you know, we were reflecting and thinking abut the fact that coming out of COVID, we did this album, When Will We Find Our Way?, which came out in 2023. And I think it was us taking a moment to look at the band It was taking a moment to look at our lives and think, something doesn’t feel right. When Will We Find Our Way? was very reflective. Then I feel this new album was past the point of reflection and was saying, oh, and things need to change. I think we all had big changes in our lives in that time going from 2023 where it was like, ‘I need to look at this.’ Personally, there was a breakup that I had and that was a big thing. I wasn’t sure how my life was going and how it was going to go moving forward, but that something needs to change. It is an evolution from that album to this one,” she said.
“For me, and I am curious if Renee and Noelle relate to this, this was an evolution in like tearing off the outer shell and revealing some really pink and sore newness underneath. Like, okay here is some stuff that I’ve had a really hard time actually looking at. And now, ‘here you go world! It’s all here for you to see and poke at.’ I think the fact that I was doing it to myself and also trying to tear it off the world as well and really looking, really looking and then just deciding, ‘okay, I’m gonna show up in this raw, raw feeling and see what happens again’ and feel it and feel the grief and I really do think that in that really raw, really real time, there’s moments where you can’t help but feel hope, because it’s just so real.”
For Noelle, it was a combination of both revealing the interior emotional narrative going on in her own mind, soul and heart, but also utilizing what she discovered on her own journey which helped her filter and come to a similar sense of righteous anger at a corrupted societal structure.
“It’s not like we’re at an end to that process. It’s not like doing the album and writing these songs and experiencing all of this means everything’s been processed. I don’t have a feeling like everything’s all packaged up and done. It’s always just part of art and making music and processing life through songwriting. It’s always the way it is. I don’t think when we stir up what’s inside and face it and process it, I don’t think it never comes back. It keeps stirring around. It might leave for a while, we might have relief from it for a bit, but then it comes back. I’ve been listening to a lot of really wonderful things, podcasts and things like that, about building our capacity as humans to weather storms and to look at things and not have to fix it all at once,” she said.
“In terms of an emotional landscape and songwriting and art creation and generation, I don’t know. I‘m so happy that this album exists. I think it’s beautiful and honest and I love that it’s connecting with people. And I’m so excited to keep writing and processing and sharing and see how we package up the next bundle of songs.”
The narrative of the creation of the music is intertwined with one of the fundamental tenets informing The Pairs as creative individuals and as a group – connection. Connection with their internal processes, connection with one another as collaborators and people who have a deep love and appreciation for one another. And then there’s the connection with the people who may only be hearing the music from their turntables or streaming services and more significantly, those experiencing the songs and the stories behind them, presented through the vehicle of the otherworldly harmonies, darkly sweet melodies and charming musicality of The Pairs in a live setting.
“I definitely don’t think any one of us over the others is more of a seeker of those things than anyone else. We’re all individuals and we express and interact and engage with the world in different ways. I think that that’s something that has kept the three of us bonded really closely, the idea that we have this intense desire for authentic connection with people and the earth and each other and to ourselves. We all talk about this, that as within, so without. What’s happening inside of us is totally what we encounter a lot of times in the world around us. And we all have ways that we carry pain. And to look at somebody who is a perfect stranger, who might bother you in a certain way, to understand that that’s also about what you’re carrying inside of you. There’s so much complexity around that idea because sometimes people are also genuinely abusive and violent. I guess what I am saying is I think that the connection piece is that we care deeply about life and an expression of life that every living thing on this planet gets to have autonomy. I think the more we dig into ourselves and offer that honestly, which is a process, like Noelle said, and it keeps returning to the rawness that Hillary mentioned of this pink, raw version of yourself that’s saying, ‘hi audience. Here I am.’ That openness elicits something in the audience. This year, since last summer, more than ever before, I am noticing an increase of people coming up to us after the show with tears in their eyes. They can’t actually express verbally in words what it is because they’re so emotional. And to me, it’s like, oh my God, that is the purpose. And that is kind of the message of the album, we’re all together on a rock, because we’re all here on this planet earth. And this planet is finite, as far as we know. There are conditions that have to exist for us all to be okay together and the more we can open and be real with each other, the more safe we can be. We don’t have to kill each other,” Renee said.
“I’ve noticed something, one of the biggest changes that’s happened is in our rhythm or patterns before showtime. We come together; we make sure that we have that time to come together and we just have this reminder too as to what we’re trying to do here. We’re not trying to force anything that doesn’t want to be there. We are just trying to be ourselves, be loving and create space where other people can just relax for a little bit and then whatever is going to come up is going to come up, and that it’s not about us.”
Hillary commented on that innate trust between the three of them which has allowed for growth and change and evolution of each one as a human and as an artist, which has had the corollary effect of impacting the dynamics of the band. The growth of each member of The Pairs, when brought together under the unifying banner of the group, increases the poignancy and meaningfulness of each performance, and the strength of each song.
“A big change I’ve seen has come with us becoming more trusting and that the shifting of trust is always happening in different way. I think at the very beginning we were like, oh we wrote some songs, maybe we can play them and people might like them. We were sort of saying, ‘I hope you like it. I hope you like us.’ Once you get over that, then there’s the trust that, we can do this. Then as soon as you start stripping away all of the anxiety that is very ego based, I mean, obviously ego is still involved and important but like it becomes more about what do we want to say? And how do we want to say it? And how deep can those connections go?” Hillary added.
It may seem dichotomous that Hillary, Noelle and Renee have been so effusive and so articulate in describing the importance of their closeness, collectiveness and collaborative spirit, but at the same time, the songs themselves are often the result of individual labour.
“Mostly, all of our recorded work with The Pairs has been written as individuals and the harmony compositions are done collectively. But in our conversations and our intentions, it’s just been important to present it all, all the work as a unit, because we benefit equally from the work. And we all inspire each other artistically. And we’ve spent so much time together that even though Hills [Hillary] may be alone with the spiders in her basement apartment, a conversation that we all had on tour, digging at something emotional could be the thing that inspires a song for her. So I think that the closeness of time together in each other’s lives, pulling at things, it inspires each other. And also, we didn’t ever want it to be separate, or competitive. We do really work together on every aspect of the music and the performances,” said Renee, who talked about how this dynamic is also a conscious decision, a way to sort of push back against the ‘me, me, me’ nature of society, particularly in the era of the proliferation of social media.
“We talk a lot about those things that bother us about the world that we live in, our culture here in Canada, in the community where we live, what do we see happening in the world that we also don’t really want to contribute to energetically. There’s a lot of hyper-individualization, and people claiming that certain things were their idea and that they did things all by themselves. But there’s the entire community that raised them, or all of the other components that had to be present for that person to be able to do that thing that they’re now getting, and taking, credit for. We’ve talked about how sometimes it even feels funny to take credit for writing a song, because there are generations of thoughts and experiences that existed before us and around us that contribute to us even being able to combine things into a song. It’s true, we each have a unique individual expression, based on how things come together in our own perceptions of the world, but there’s so much that contributes to us being able to do that, that it just feels gross to be like, ‘oh, that’s my song.’ But also, if people need to do that, then that is okay. We just don’t. It didn’t sit right between the three of us. So we just kind of tried to push back on that individualistic narrative. Like both Hillary and Noelle have said, we contribute to each other’s creative process in many ways, and they’re our songs, just as they’re my mom’s songs, and the other artists that I’ve listened to. It’s a work in progress for us to keep that mindset and heart space.”
“The arranging process sometimes sees the song torn apart as a collective and it becomes something different, it totally takes on a new like. So by the end, when we’re presenting it as The Pairs, so many times I feel like this is very different than the song I wrote, it’s way better because maybe we decided, oh this line actually shouldn’t go there, or let’s not do the chorus this many times, or let’s cut a verse because the song doesn’t need it. And that’s a group process and a group decision,” added Hillary.
“We are not separate. We’re all here together. We have a tremendous amount of influence and effect on one another, and I think our biggest work is learning how to navigate those things and understanding ourselves within the broader system. I love every single song. I really do, which feels really special to be able to say that. And there’s something about the song, ‘Everything Ends’ the first time I heard it it’s like, I don’t even know if Renee wrote that song. That was one where I was like, ‘where the f*** did that song come from? That song is so powerful. For me, if I think too much about it, without fail, that song will put me in tears every single time,” said Noelle.
“What I think is also unique about it is that it was one of the ones that got put together in the studio last minute, and it came together so quickly. We weren’t going to record it, but then Tracy asked, because he saw me post it on my social media.”
‘Everything Ends’ is indeed an evocative and emotionally powerful song, with a depth of meaning that can feel different for every individual and even down to the particular circumstances and experiences that each listener is living with in that moment.
“We get so attached to things that aren’t right here, right now. It’s just my attempt at being with life as it is, and not in the ways that I imagine it to ne. The last couple years of my life, I’ve been really just completely enamored with the mind, the human mind, and just learning as much as I possibly can about it, and have come to think about thinking as a phenomenon of the mind. As humans, we put a lot of weight, and we assign a lot of truth to the information our mind just spits at us, when really, it’s just this running machine, that there’s so much more intelligence that we can tap into. That’s what the song was, it was saying I know that I am being absolutely drowned by my thoughts, and I don’t want life to feel like that. So I was trying to just look outside my own rumination and find life outside myself,” explained Renee.
“And those were the things that popped up through the song. This energy here, the energy in that tree that just keeps going up and growing and sends so much strength and support to the rest of this ecosystem in the forest and all the little components. It was just like, please, please, please help me to connect to that kind of intelligence in my own self so that I can be more at peace.”
Revisiting how The Pairs breadth of subject matter is often a complex melding of the micro with the macro, how the internal universe within each one of the songwriters’ spirits is focused on things that are strictly about their experiences, but others are of wider, existential significance, we come to the song ‘Past My Prime.’ With this exceptionally contemplative and boldly candid song, Hillary focuses on the hyper personal, her very real struggles, her sometimes tenuous hold on happiness, battling the internal negative voices, creating a song that is actually one where the story is of wider appeal, because these are, indeed questions universal to most humans with any sort of self-awareness.
“’Past My Prime’ came from a lot of directions. There were a lot of things that kept saying the same thing to me. It was stirring these wounds of feeling like you’re running out of time. Feeling like that time keeps moving, and am I doing all the things that I wanted to do. Do people think that I’m making bad choices? Am I being completely unrealistic in pursuing music as my career, and not leaving any other doors open, is that realistic? I literally have zero other doors open. So there’s this feeling okay, is this just not gonna work?” she said.
“All of a sudden, I’m, you know, at a time in my life where it’s like, well what other skills do I have to offer the world? This also came about at the end of this relationship, which was a big, big shift. The shift was like, okay my life was heading in this one direction, and now it’s not heading in that same direction. Part of it was, I don’t know if I want kids, but I also know that there’s only a certain amount of time in my life where I can make that decision. So, is time going to make that decision for me instead? And also, my childhood home, being a home that now has another person in it that isn’t of my family [her mom’s new partner] and so many different things. I didn’t feel like I had control over my own home. I was moving so much and making decisions because my ex-partner made a decision and it was up to me to be like, okay then, I guess I’ll do that too, instead of asking what is it that I truly want. So yeah, that song came at a time of just feeling like, am I swept along with all of this? Swept along with time, swept along with other people’s decision. And there’s the whole discussion about, well if you’re not married, if you’re not a mother, what are you offering the world?
“And I think my perspective on all of this will keep changing, and I will still be feeling these things. But I honestly think just by even saying these things, and then having other people share that they have those thoughts too, they can relate, it’s like, okay I feel a little more comfortable saying it now. It honestly is a really raw part of me to share. And it is every single time that it’s been shared. And then other people say, ‘oh my God, I felt that too.’ And it’s like, okay, we’re not alone. Like the album title, we’re all together on a rock. And I just wanted to add this to the discussion. I heard a lot of people say over the past couple of years, oh women draw the biological short straw kind of thing. They’re saying, women biologically have it hard because of menopause and the way it’s like, you body’s just meant to have a baby and then it goes downhill. After menopause, your skin gets all saggy and then what? Then you have nothing to offer the world because your looks are gone. And I hear this from so many different directions and it’s bullshit. It’s bullshit. I’ve had many guy friends say, ‘I’m so sorry that you have to have the biological short straw. That sucks.’ It’s only a biological short straw if you frame it that very specific way.”
Together on a Rock proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Hillary Watson, and Renee and Noelle Coghlan definitely have something to offer the world – many, many things in fact. The music they create is demonstrative of their sublime talent, their songs and live shows are exercises in connection and community, and they, as individual humans, have skills of observation, wisdom, insight, insatiable curiosity that compels them to create musical art that changes hearts and minds. It is needed, and it is appreciated by all who have had the good fortune to encounter them.
Folks in Toronto will be able to see them on Wednesday, Oct. 29 at Hugh’s Room Live, before the group heads west for dates in Manitoba and Alberta in early November. In the new year, The Pairs are heading to Australia for festivals in Tasmania and in Newstead.
For more information, visit https://thepairsmusic.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
